The Last Voyage of the Jolly Roger
by reyclou
Summary: (Post S3). The Jolly Roger reappears in Storybrooke with one lone survivor. Killian and Emma race to unravel the ship's tragedies before a similar fate overtakes Storybrooke. Gold, on the other hand, seems to have a plan of his own.
1. Ghost Ship (Prologue)

_Set immediately after S3. As season 4 hasn't yet aired (at the time of this writing) no elements or spoilers will be worked in.  
_

_Heavy use of a fairytale OC (Original Character). You have been warned. _

_Feedback is appreciated! Don't be shy!  
_

* * *

**"To die would be an awfully big adventure."  
_-Peter Pan_**

* * *

**Chapter One: Ghost Ship (Prologue)  
**

Killian blamed the rum.

Not that it could possibly be the rum's fault, but he blamed it all the same.

Sure rum could have taken the edge off his midnight walk along Storybrooke's boardwalk, mind racing with—he still couldn't believe it—that kiss. Rum might've blurred in his head the time portal and the Crocodile and Swan in tears, a burning stake, fresh memories of times long past and green eyes bright with new-found hope.

But even the rum could not have explained why, sure as sober daylight, _the Jolly Roger_ loomed above the docks, the soft, subtle glow of candlelight warming the windows of the captain's quarters.

His mind knew there was no possible way this could end well, but his legs, being attached to an idiot, took him toward the ship anyway. He justified his investigation on the basis that _obviously_ the ship shouldn't be there, someone should find out why, and that someone should be someone who knew where and with whom the ship _should_ be; seeing as how Emma was the only other soul in town who knew what he'd done with it, well, that sort of narrowed down options significantly. That this was yet another impossible thing in a day of impossible things and impossible things tended to involve him courting doom seemed a distant technicality.

Again, probably the rum talking. Or rather, thinking. Or, maybe, walking.

A blackbird screeched as he stood at the edge of the dock, staring at the stairs up to his former vessel. Good form dictated he announce himself, no matter how many centuries he'd lived under _the Jolly Roger's_ sails, but then there was the pirate thing. Piracy, he had to underline, was not just a way of life, but a surprisingly effective way of staying alive and his every black-leather-and-red-flag instinct screamed in warning almost as much as they ached with longing to feel her deck under foot again.

Another screech interrupted his thoughts and, before he could decide one way or the other, light and fire flashed around him, a great roaring sounded above him, and all thought dissolved into burning heat and his own hoarse howl.


	2. The Last of the Jolly Roger

"**Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?"  
-_Peter Pan and Wendy_**

* * *

**Chapter Two: The Last of the Jolly Roger**

The sounds of the sea gently woke Killian from a dead sleep. In that space between full sleep and full consciousness, the _lap-lapping_ of sea waves and the subtle sway and pitch of the ship beneath him made his bleary mind momentarily question whether the last year had been but a vague, fleeting dream. It was as if he had simply slipped away for a time with his visions of a magic-less land, but the ship now called him back to open air and floating battle and salt-soaked courage.

Blue eyes opened to the first blush of a red dawn rising above the masts and rigging of _the Jolly Roger_. He laid sprawled face-up on the deck, feeling sore and mildly bruised, but otherwise unharmed. Seeing no other soul from where he lay, he made to get up, discovering instantly that his hook was missing, as were his pistol, his sword, and all other weaponry. Rising, he saw that the ship was now out in the water, within sight of Storybrooke, but beyond the town line. Too far to swim. Killian felt like a mouse who only noticed the trap after it had sprung. He turned then, seeking out the ship's helm but the cocking of a gun froze him in place.

A young woman he did not recognize stood at the massive wooden wheel, holding the ship steady with one hand and, with the other, pointing his own pistol directly at him.

Well, at least he'd located the pistol.

Killian forced his best smile. The girl didn't look past twenty and he almost felt guilty for all the ways he considered wrestling the gun away from her, more specifically the bones he could break doing it, but then that _was_ the occupational hazard of kidnapping a pirate. Still, he thought he'd try to bluff his way out with the bumbling innocent route. "Apologies, lass, to intrude. But when I saw the ship-"

"Save it," she cut him off. "I know how you work, Hook." The gun barrel didn't falter for a moment.

Definitely a trap. A trap, he reminded himself, he had _walked straight into_.

"Stand here," the woman ordered, indicating a spot on the quarter deck, just a few steps from her station at the wheel. He complied, trying his best to look unconcerned about the barrel trained on his eyes.

He walked as slowly as he dared, stealing the chance to study the woman closer. She had a roughness about her. Tanned—used to the outdoors. Pretty—but unkempt, her long, dark hair pulling free of a loose braid. Strong stature—though her body still clung to the last grasps of girlhood. Clothes—militaristic cream linens and red naval coat, torn and bloodied, worn without pride or discipline.

Military deserter, Killian concluded. Common enough on a pirate ship. And he would know.

The woman spoke as he came to a stop. "I will say a series of names. If you so much as twitch a pinkie, I shoot."

"Sounds like a very boring game, love," he began, trying to ease his way closer with the charming route when her next word stopped him in his tracks.

"Liam."

Killian's eyes involuntarily narrowed and the pistol inched higher in final warning. Again, he willed himself still, focusing on the flecks of color in her steel-grey eyes. Here, he saw something he recognized, the hawkish look of desperate and untethered retribution. The same look had reflected at him in every mirror since he burned the Pegasus sail. Questions rose in his throat, but he swallowed them reflexively.

"Milah," she continued slowly and Killian felt an anger brewing deep in his gut. Not the ancient and vengeful ache that drove him across the realms to an island beyond time, but a biting and indignant wrath at the invasion into his deepest darkness. That she was trying to manipulate him, he could tell, and so resolved to avoid letting her do just that.

"Baelfire," she hissed and a bolt of despair and guilt shot through his being, but he clamped it down and remained stone still. His breathing quickened with the effort of holding everything in. The woman inched forward, angling the gun upward and pressing the barrel to the underside of his chin, eyes glinting with malice, she whispered "Emma."

Killian's muscles strained with the tension of conscious stillness and he had to concentrate very carefully on his breathing to keep from going for the gun. He realized if the girl had called up the inferno that knocked him out in the first place, she likely didn't _need_ the gun, but that was only part of his hesitation. Blackbeard's words echoed in his ears and he wondered if he _was_ going soft. An enemy stood in front of him, but he saw only a broken little girl with the look of the Lost Boys in her eyes-memories of the beanstalk flooded his-and that gave him pause.

Something of his thought process must have registered in his eyes because the woman seemed to reach a decision. Her demeanor changed and she softened visibly. The rancor faded from her eyes to be replaced with a dim determination. To his surprise, she flipped the gun over in her hand, holding the handle out toward him.

"That was a test. You passed," she said humorlessly.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" Killian's nerves had not yet settled and the ice brimming in his voice surprised even him. He snatched the gun possessively, holding it at his side, though pointed down.

She waited a beat too long before replying, "Lee."

"That's not a name, that's a lie."

Lee gave him a skeptical look, the first shade of real humanity he'd seen yet. "And you're Captain Hook with neither a ship nor a hook. You're not really in a position to judge."

"It's been a bad year."

Lee reached into her own coat, withdrew the silvery weight of the captain's hook and held it out for him.

Cautiously, he took it and snapped it back into place. "So who are you really? Am I supposed to believe you're the new captain? How do you know those names?"

"This ship has no captain," Lee replied distantly. "No crew left either, aside from me. You could say I'm the last of _the Jolly Roger_. As for the rest," her hand returned to her coat and she withdrew a flask. "Well, there is not enough rum left of this ship to answer that question properly. Let's just say your story travels farther than you know." She tipped the metal bottle in offering. "Breakfast?"

Killian only stared in reply.

As if to sturdy herself, Lee took a swig before continuing, "The important thing is that I'm here to help."

"Help? By kidnapping me, nearly setting me on fire and holding me at gunpoint?"

"Again, you're really not in the strongest position to argue tactics, _Pirate_."

"Well, if it's the Witch you've come about, she's dead. Or hasn't that bit reached you yet?"

"No, it's not about the Witch," Lee replied, raising the flask to her lips again.

Killian grew impatient. "Then what other threat could be so bad that you'd have to sneak me out of Storybrooke under cover of darkness and imprison me on my own ship?"

Lee swallowed mid-swig. "Oh, you're not a prisoner, Hook," she capped the flask and shoved it back into her coat. "You're bait."


	3. Bait and Switch

**"Take care, lest an adventure is now offered you, which,**  
**if accepted, will plunge you into the deepest woe."**  
**_-Peter Pan_**

* * *

**Chapter Three: Bait and Switch**

It was Killian's turn to turn the pistol on Lee who, in turn, glanced at the gun, glanced at Killian, and turned her disinterested gaze back toward Storybrooke. "Don't worry, I'm not hunting anything you care about. If anything, I'm defending it."

Killian raised a brow in annoyance, "But only by accident?"

Lee nodded in thought, "That's a surprisingly accurate way of putting it."

"I feel I should advise you this really isn't inspiring any groundswell of confidence, and there is a certain modicum of trust necessary, even among pirates."

Lee shot a glare back at him, something like offense mixed with hatred flickered in her eyes, "I'm not a pirate."

"Kidnapping. Coercion. Arson," Killian listed her actions matter-of-factly, "Oh, they all say that at the start, and yet here you are standing on a pirate ship."

Ignoring the gun, Lee retrieved a telescope from her pocket, taking a moment to eye Storybrooke through its sight. "My captain's mission required the fastest ship in the realms. That meant _the Jolly Roger. _Whatever its former life, this is a battleship. We even made a few upgrades," she indicated two additions to the deck which resembled cannons."Not that they did much good. He's gone now, as is the crew, lost in the fight against a foe that ravaged and destroyed my entire realm. It's here, now, in Storybrooke, and I mean to make an end of it by whatever means necessary."

Her story had the air of truth to Killian's ears, confirmed by a subtle vulnerability in her demeanor. He sensed these were things she'd rather not share so openly, and the stress of it drained her, but he had to keep pressing. "And it's just coincidence that I'm the one you chose for this happy adventure?"

"I told you this tale doesn't make sense without an overabundance of drink, but since you asked," Lee glanced at Killian again. "This… creature… is of a particularly transmutable nature. It can travel between realms, at will, but each journey takes a vast toll. It will be very small and weak and will seek a host, of sorts, to latch onto while it recovers. It's also of a magical nature, it lives off the…" Lee paused to look for the right words, "_turmoil_ of others, the stored up emotional ravages of life, and the more exposure one has to pain, the greater a target they become. Point is: the greatest targets are old and tortured souls." Lee shrugged at him, "If I may be frank, you're about as old and blackened as they come."

"You don't know Storybrooke very well, then, lass. You might want to ask Rumplestiltskin, he rather has the market cornered on pain and suffering. Granted, he's usually the one dealing it out."

Lee shook her head. "The Dark One would be the last person it would target, too strong for it to overpower in its current state. Besides," she said with a shrug, "it's already come after you once."

Pieces started to fall together in Killian's mind. "Last night… the fireball when I approached the ship?"

"That was me. You passed out when it attacked. I had to burn it off to spare you. Fortunately for you, that absolutely tragic amount of leather you wear might have actually saved your life."

"I'll forward your compliments to my tailor."

"It's more than that," Lee paused for sincerity. "Even if the creature doesn't take a host, if it doesn't kill outright, it can still infect them with a kind of soul sickness. The test I gave you, the emotions stirred up by such memories would've been like a buffet, the darkness would have come to the surface, you would have been unable to control yourself and I'd have been obliged to blow your head off." At the look of surprise in Killian's eyes, Lee looked away. "Believe me, it would've been the humane act. But please, Hook, if shooting me would make you feel better. Please do. After all I've been through; you'd be doing me a favor—I wouldn't have to watch this realm burn too. "

Humbled, Killian lowered the gun and shoved it back in its place at his waistband. He was pretty sure he did need a drink after trying to wrap his head around Lee's story. But, for once, this wasn't the time. Lee sighted up the telescope again and moved her head so that Killian could look through it over her shoulder. "See for yourself," she offered.

Killian had to bend slightly to get the right angle. Through the scope he saw a blackbird flitting back and forth near what must have been the very edge of the town line over the water.

"All this over a little bird?" he whispered in disbelief.

"Don't be fooled by the size. This is as weak as it will ever be, but that is a monster with the capacity to destroy everything. Now, the ship's enchantment protects anyone within it-"

The bird suddenly dropped out of the scope's view and Killian had to wrench the scope from Lee to maintain his tracking. A ways out from Storybrooke beach, a miniscule craft tore through the waters, directly on course to meet _the Jolly Roger_. His heart sank when he saw long strands of blonde hair blowing in the wind.

"Swan!" he blurted.

Lee's face registered surprised and she grabbed the scope back to confirm. The blackbird careened away from the town line and arced back toward the speeding craft. She slammed the scope closed and shoved it into a pocket in one swift move. "Take the wheel, get us to her as fast as you can," she instructed, even as she jumped from the quarter deck.

"What are you doing?" Killian called as Lee ran to the front of the ship, but whatever response she gave was snatched by the sea air and ragged waves. He caught only one nonsensical word.

_Flamethrower. _

-0-

Emma blinked against the wind, willing the Jet Ski closer to the imposing ship. She hadn't quite figured out how she planned to get aboard, but it didn't take a homing spell to conclude that, if Hook disappeared the second _the Jolly Roger _re-appeared; the two had to be related. She heard only the sound of the Jet Ski's engine and the rushing of the wind in her ears as she sped through the water.

The rise and fall of the craft through the water felt a bit disorienting to her. Was the ship moving? From her low angle, she couldn't tell if anyone was at the helm, but—yes—before her eyes the ship moved with speed she, under normal circumstances, couldn't possibly attribute to an ancient-looking tall ship. Yet the craft seemed to turn on a dime, heading straight for her.

_Crap._

Emma pre-emptively veered to the side and was surprised when she nearly collided with a blackbird swooping down beside her. They missed by near inches. She looked up to see the muzzle of a cannon swing over the side of the ship, tracking on her movement. Fire burst from its lips and time slowed just for Emma. She rolled off the Jet Ski, hitting the water hard enough to knock the wind from her as she went under. For several panicked seconds, she thrashed underwater, lungs burning and no sense of up or down. Dressed as she was in street clothes, buoyancy was not in her favor. But with enough determined kicking, she broke the surface enough to bob her face and hands above water.

She thought she saw a bird swoop by—the same blackbird—but flaming, resembling a phoenix in flight. It arced up into the sky and, with a great screech, burned up like cinders and dissolved into nothingness.

The slap of rope on water brought her attention back down and Emma grabbed at a length of thick rope that trailed back up to the ship. No sooner had she secured herself to it, but she was rising into the air; sea below her, sky above her and suddenly, unmistakably, Killian's arms around her, pulling her aboard.

"Swan!? Are you alright?"

"Killian?" was all she could get out before another woman's voice barked.

"Hook. Back off."

Emma stared in surprise as a young woman—a girl, really—leaned over the man and, holding a dagger to his neck, pulled him to his full height.

"Don't move a pinkie, or I slit his throat," she hissed.

Fear and anger flashed through Emma's system and, without any conscious thought, she clenched a fist. The girl yelped in pain and dropped the dagger. Emma waved a hand and envisioned the girl flying off the ship.

As if hit by gale force winds, the girl fell backwards, but rather than the flying, sprawling sight Emma expected, the girl's feet gave a faint green glow and she merely slid back wildly on her heels until she hit the ship's railing and crumpled to the deck. Killian's eyes darted between the two women, as if torn.

Still grunting in pain, the girl called out, "It's okay! She passed. She's fine."

Killian's shoulders dropped in relief and he turned to offer Emma a hand up. Still completely shocked and confused, questions flooded out of her mouth faster than the pirate could answer. "What was all that about? What's going on? Who is that? What's the ship doing here?"

He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Take it easy, Swan. You'll have all your answers just as soon as I can find you a few stiff drinks. Trust me."


	4. Captain's Orders

"**Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would  
even at this date set the country in a blaze."  
**_**-Peter and Wendy**_

* * *

**Chapter Four: Captain's Orders**

Killian helped Emma while Lee guided the ship back to port. He tried his best to fill her in on Lee's revelations; though having so many questions himself, he didn't seem to paint a convincing picture. Lee had hardly spoken a word since clearing Emma, aside from explaining that, had Emma been infected, she'd have been incapable of defending another. She stood withdrawn into some quiet, distant place within her as she mechanically maneuvered the ship to rest. Unsurprisingly, a small crowd had already gathered at the dock, anxious for answers of their own. Killian only had to wave them aboard and they were nearly buried in hugs and shoulder slaps, more-so Emma than Killian—okay, mainly Emma—but it was the kind of imbalance he was more than willing to endure.

When the inevitable questions came, he turned to give credit to Lee for their lives, but found the helm deserted and the brunette nowhere in sight. Begging off on further answers until the Charming's could get Emma home and into a hot shower, Killian promised to explain everything over a piping hot breakfast at Granny's. The crowd respectfully ebbed like the tide and dispersed back into the town, drawing with them the still-sopping Emma and all the questions to which he still had precious few answers.

He found Lee in the captain's quarters, seated at the table, surrounded by several different liquid "breakfast" options.

"Contrary to popular belief, there are better ways to celebrate victory, lass," he began. Seeing his sword laying on the end of the table, he helped himself and slid it back into its sheath.

Lee's voice came out cold and distant. "The monster is dead, yes, but all I know is gone. Not much of a victory."

"Believe it or not, I know how you feel, more or less. Which is why I get this," he waved a hand to indicate the table full of alcohol, "but it's not going to work. Not long-term. Come help me tell your story to the town, we're sure to find someone who can help you figure out where to go from here."

"You and I both know I'm hardly fit for public display right now."

Killian had to agree. She already had a knack for bad first impressions, and showing up sloshed at Granny's would be her worst yet. "You take today and mourn your lost," he conceded, taking the first few steps back up the hatch without taking his eyes off her, "but tomorrow, we're going to talk and you'll not only tell me all that you have been leaving out, but we are going to find you a new direction. That I promise."

-0-

Lee gave no response as Killian left, save to bring another drink to her lips. Her thoughts wandered for some time, endlessly chasing lost possibilities, when the hatch suddenly creaked open again.

"I thought we agreed, pirate," she hissed.

A distinguished voice momentarily caught her off guard. "I suppose congratulations are in order, dearie."

Lee looked to the entrance, where a slight, greying man with a cane cleared the last stair. "Are they," she rolled her eyes as she leaned back, "_Mate_?"

"Not many people can lie to Emma Swan and get away with it."

"Technically he did the lying for me."

Unimpressed, he leaned his weight on the cane."Unfortunately for you, I'm a much tougher sell."

"Are you now?" Lee smiled patronizingly, mindlessly tracing the rim of her glass with a finger. "I suppose I wouldn't know, considering I've never met you, Rumplestiltskin."

"Oh, but I know you," Rumplestiltskin stared icily, "I've seen you in dreams I'd rather not repeat."

"Oh, Rumplestiltskin," she put a hand to her mouth as if embarrassed. "You_ charmer_, you."

Unamused, Rumplestiltskin took a step forward. "I've seen you for some time, but always in the distance. Never here. _You_ are not supposed to be _here_."

Lee grabbed her half-empty glass off the table and lifted it in toast, "I'll drink to that."

"I suggest you promptly find your way back home before I find myself having to _intervene._"

"Nothing for me to go back to. All the home I have is the home I have with me," Lee had to repeat the line to herself a few times to figure out if she'd gotten all the words in the right order. Language made less and less sense as the day progressed.

"Then I suggest you take your ship and find some place far, far away. If you stay in Storybrooke, if you cause harm of any kind, I _will_ intervene."

Lee's laugh came out more like a snarl. "You threaten me like I have something to lose."

"How about your memories," Rumplestiltskin shot back. "How about I take them and throw you out there, at the mercy of the Land Without Magic? They won't notice another little lost girl."

Lee's mood darkened considerably. She put her drink down to glare at him.

Rumplestiltskin waved a hand, but stopped suddenly, staring at the woman's booted feet under the table. He smiled. "Your feet," he whispered, curious, "you can't leave the ship. You're trapped here. This ship isn't your home... it's your curse," he cooed, searching her eyes as if reading a book. "You can't leave… without your captain's orders. And your captain is dead. How tragic," a smile crept across his face, "how convenient."

In one swift move, Lee's arm went to her coat, then flung wildly. Rumplestiltskin, without even wincing, simply stepped aside slightly as something sharp and heavy flew past him and hit the wall.

Rumple smiled, this time genuinely, "It takes a lot more than that to kill me, _Lillian._"

Drunk and exasperated, Lee shouted, "I don't wish you dead, I just wish you gone! Just let me be! For once in eternity, let me be!"

Rumplestiltskin retreated with a confident smirk. As the hatch closed on the aged ship, Lee stared straight forward at the silvery steel of a hook embedded in the wall like a massive tiger's claw.

-0-

Henry hunched over, climbing the stairs slowly so as not to be readily seen. He imagined himself as Solid Snake, expertly evading detection as he inched toward his goal. The sun had set some time ago and the scant lights on the docks gave him ample cover. He came flush with the deck of _the Jolly Roger_ and, after peering ever so slyly around the dock for witnesses, half dashed, half dove onto the deck, keeping his head down so as not to be seen above the railing. Pausing a moment, he listened for the sounds of pursuit, but none came.

He moved forward in a crouch, only using his hands where necessary, because he really was too old to be outright crawling, even if no one was around to see it. He walked carefully so as not to even creak a board. He stopped when he saw what he came for.

Just as Killian said, two massive flamethrowers sat on the deck of_ the Jolly Roger_.

Flamethrowers. On a pirate ship.

This was the coolest thing he had EVER SEEN.

"It's poor form to board a ship without permission," came a weary voice from behind him.

Henry turned around. He'd only seen the woman briefly and from a distance as she brought the ship in to dock, but he recognized her cream-linen uniform and short red coat. "Miss... uh… Captain Lee?" He stammered nervously. "I'm sorry, I didn't want anyone to know I was here. I just wanted to look at the flamethrowers. I would have come another time, but I really didn't think my mom would let me, so I sorta had to sneak on and I'm really, really, really sorry."

Lee just stared at him for a while with a confused look on her face and Henry started to feel a little uncomfortable. She finally spoke her confusion slowly, "Your mother… Emma?"

"No, Regina. She's… not big on the whole pirate thing. She'd kill me if she knew I was here. Please don't tell?"

Again, Lee stared at him, as if looking through him. Henry noticed redness around her eyes, as if she'd been crying. "Are you alright?" He asked.

Again, blank stare.

And that's when it hit Henry. She was blistering drunk.

Feeling beyond awkward, Henry began to move toward the stairs again, trying not to let his discomfort show.

"Well, I should really be going."

"No, Henry, wait," she began, but whatever she was to say was drowned by a terrible screech from above. In her reduced state, shock must have overtaken her senses because Lee turned and swayed unsteadily as she searched the sky.

Henry saw the danger first and dropped. "Get down!" he shouted, pulling Lee down by the arm. Something like a hawk dove past, barely missing the two. He saw it bank for another pass. "The stairs! Get down the stairs!" he ordered, but the girl's mind seemed too sluggish to understand his words. He grabbed her arm to pull her again, but the hawk-creature dove again. With a scream, Lee pushed him aside and the hawk caught her by the back of her brocade coat.

-0-

To Lee, all was sound and motion and pressure. Like drowning in mid-air. She slid violently to the side and was aware of her head bouncing off hardwood, but pain came only as an afterthought to the numbness of her mind. Screeching echoed in her ears, and screaming. A voice calling. Commanding. Captaining. Captain.

"Get down the stairs!"

Then pulling and screeching and no. no. no.

Shoving and sliding and slamming.

And voices from fractured time all calling "Henryyyyyy!"

And fire and flash and inferno.

And a phoenix in flight, all the realms burning to ash and falling, falling, falling.


	5. Captain's Log

_Yes, I'm cheating a bit with this quote. But it's one of my favorites._

* * *

"**You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming?  
That's where I'll always love you… That's where I'll be waiting."  
**_**-Hook (1991)**_

* * *

**Chapter Five: Captain's Log**

Emma fidgeted furiously with her phone as she leaned against a mast of _the Jolly Roger_, trying to stem the unfolding text explosion. It wasn't much past midnight, but most of the town was not only still awake, but unapologetically freaking out over the dock attack and, between being sheriff and, well, being her, everyone seemed to be looking to her for answers.

Every. Two. Seconds.

Fifteen more texts alerts popped up simultaneously before Emma finally sent an exasperated mass text: _Meeting. Town Hall. Half an hour. Someone bring caffeine or I start shooting._

She jammed the phone into her pocket when she heard boots on the ship's steps. "Lee's still unconscious. Whale is under orders to minimize contact with her until we know the damage," she informed as scruff and long coat and steel stepped on deck. "Henry is fine, Regina certainly has better aim with flames than your little sailor buddy—what's your big idea?"

Leather creaked as Killian paused to stretch sore shoulders; neither had had much sleep in the past week and both were feeling the effect. Blue eyes gazed around the ship before landing on Emma. "Something the lass said to me this morning before you dropped in on us. She knew things about me, specifically names, but not context. She knew order, but not significance. Like all she had was just a scrap of information. It got me thinking—every ship captain keeps a log. Myself being no exception."

Emma dawned in a smirk of disbelief. "Are you telling me you have a diary?"

"Don't let your imagination get the best of you, Swan, a ship takes a lot of bookkeeping to keep afloat; however," ringed hands waved in mock admission, "occasional events do lend themselves to a certain air of artistic flourish." He lifted an eyebrow at Emma's soft giggle. "Believe me, if you were adrift in Neverland with nary a soul but Smee to consider your reflections, you'd prefer the conversation of inanimate objects too."

"Exactly what did you put in there?"

Killian shrugged, "Aside from the daily essentials, just bits and scraps, hidden in a code I thought only _I_ could break."

Emma's brow furrowed suspiciously, "And you think the she found it, broke the code and read it to get a scant glimpse into your personal life?"

"Is that really so hard to believe? I am a living legend, after all."

"I don't know," she paused, as if lost in thought, "I'm having a hard time picturing Captain Hook having a rabid fangirl."

The pirate leaped up to the quarter deck with the lightness and grace of repeated experience, familiarity and command. "Did I fail to mention, if there was even a half-decent captain aboard this ship, we would have an account of everything of significance that has happened to this ship since I left the Enchanted Forest?"

Emma followed, eyes bright, "Which will go a long way to filling in some of the blanks in Lee's story, give us a better idea of what we're dealing with."

Grinning, the pirate spread his arms open in an invitation to embrace, "How much do you love me right now? Go on, be creative."

Emma rolled her eyes and kneeled to test the hatch which covered the captain's quarters.

Locked.

"You wouldn't happen to have keys for this?"

"I'm afraid not. Looks like one of their _upgrades_."

"Nevermind, I brought my own," she said, pulling a set of lock picks from her pocket, "just give me a minute." Getting at the massive lock from above proved tricky, but when it finally gave with a satisfying pop, she flung the hatch open and scrambled down the stairs.

To find Killian standing next to the captain's table, striking a flint to light a lamp.

Sparks and hushed gold tones glinted off his smile.

Emma's shoulders slumped. "That was more pirate training, wasn't it?"

"Take it as a vote of confidence that I keep trying, Swan," Killian laughed as the flame caught and the room brightened with him. "Now, here we are," he turned to indicate a shelf behind him. A regal looking collection of hardbound journals sat on prominent display. "Ship's logs. Every detail about the ship, its cargo and its travels meticulously documented."

Emma stepped forward and took a volume, opening it carefully, finding it endlessly beautiful, its pages filled edge to edge in a surprisingly exquisite, flowing hand. Emma felt a genuine smile spread across her face as she drew a hand down a smooth page, imagining the brooding captain spending hours with a quill, listing every detail with a quiet _scratch-scratch, _his earnest features bathed in flickering candlelight.

She jumped slightly when Killian cleared the whole shelf with his hook, knocking the rest of the volumes to the floor in a loud clatter.

"Complete fiction, of course. Those are the books meant for the authorities and other such nonsense. The _real_ story is back here," Killian put hand and hook to the back of the shelf and, with a series of practiced taps, knocked out a large slat of wood. Behind sat a second set of books, these more practical and careworn, Killian handed her a volume to look at while he rummaged through the rest. She paged through it with a little more interest, but registered only intricate dots and scribbles, though with that certain rhythmic beauty inherent to ancient, scrawling ink.

She looked up to find the captain watching her, a contended smirk on his scruffy face. He held up a handful of newer-looking volumes. "Here's what we came for."

He laid the small stack on the table and opened one, shoving the corner under another volume to keep the book propped open. Emma could tell these were in a different, rougher hand with different symbols, but both were equally foreign to her. She leaned closer to the journal, fascinated.

"Crude," Killian observed, leaning in as well, "Very crude, which will make it easy to crack."

"Great," Emma nodded. She hadn't noticed his movement and, turning to address him, inadvertently brushed the tip of her nose against his cheek. He responded by playfully nudging his nose to hers.

He gave her a sly puppy face. She gave him an eyebrow that said _down boy._

She slipped a radio from her belt. "Here, take this."

Killian looked between her and the radio with confusion. "Why?"

"Because I don't have time to teach you how to use a cell phone," she pressed the device into his hand. She took a few moments to familiarize him with the technology, using her fingers to position his over the correct buttons. Killian, rather enjoying the closeness, feigned complete incompetence, making Emma repeat her demonstration a number of times before he finally admitted to having the hang of it and let her hands free.

"Let me know as soon as you have anything useful," Emma called as she the stairs up two at a time.

"Aye," Killian replied softly. He scratched his lower lip with the back of his thumb, and then sat down to trace the voyage of his lost ship through the winds of despair.

-0-

Not so far away, Lee laid battered and sleeping, mind wandering in vivid dreams as minds do when the unconscious body finds no use for them. She dreamed of home, and homeland, and a home away from home and, unbeknownst to the pirate, set course to follow the same winds under the Storybrooke nightfall, guided by the same star—the second to the right—straight on 'til morning.


	6. Lillian, Killian, and Captain Swan

"_**I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us."  
-Peter Pan**_

* * *

**Chapter Six: Lillian, Killian, and Captain Swan**

Blood and sweat dripped into Lillian's eye and she braced her head against the tree bark, blinking until she could see straight again. Heavy rustling from below stirred her back into motion. She hefted her frame up another branch.

"Ye'd best give up, lass. It's a worse death tha' awaits ye if ye keep runnin'," a gritty voice chuckled from below. "Ye come down now, we kill ye quickly. But keep it up, an' it's Marooner's Rock for ye."

"Technically, _pirate_, we're climbing," she grunted as she hefted all her weight to one leg and pushed herself up through a break in the branches. Her head cleared the leafy canopy, thrusting her into dim sunlight and early dawn unveiled a murky Neverland sprawling around her.

"But I'll grant you this, running is not a particularly brilliant plan."

A dark mass hovered between her and the rising sun, growing larger as it grew closer.

The pirate's head, scratched and muddied from his own ascent, popped up from the branches as the mass loomed overhead. The angle of light changed and the mass turned blue and yellow and breathtaking as _the Jolly Roger_ sailed out of the sun rays, dragging a rope along the treetops. Lillian rammed her heel into his head, launching herself off the tree, grabbing the rope and swinging free.

"Not when you can fly!"

The pirate, a greasy blonde with a bleeding, bulbous nose, could only hold fast to the tree and glare as the girl swooped away, brown leather coat flapping in the wind, laughing victoriously as she dangled from the side of the soaring ship.

-0-

"Did you say the future?" Emma blurted. She'd expected a certain level of chaos in the town hall, but she'd arrived to find absolute bedlam and securing a private place to radio Killian basically meant bolting herself in a supply closet, while Mary Margaret and David ran interference. The whole town, still emotionally exhausted from the shadow of the Wicked Witch, was having a hard time dealing with yet another imminent threat.

"_Aye, love. Nigh thirty years, give or take." _

"How can you be sure it's for real?"

"_Because I know who wrote it, Swan. It's Henry."_

"Henry!? You're reading _Henry's_ journal from the future?"

"_Aye. Fortunate for us, too, given his loquacious nature. He records that, sometime in our near future, Storybrooke comes under devastating attack. You all make it back to the Enchanted Forest, but the threat follows you. While there, he seeks out _the Jolly Roger_ to aide in the fight. That's as far as I've made out."_

"So it's possible Lee's not from another realm, she's from our future?" True panic began to build in Emma's gut. If all of Lee's realm burned, and she's from the Enchanted Forest's future…

"_Aye, so it would seem. Her description matches Henry's. A shape-shifting creature which takes hosts, drives its victims into homicidal insanity, and travels realms seemingly at will."_

"How do things like this even exist?" Emma sighed in exasperation.

"_Just delivering the message, love."_

Emma paused for a moment before radioing back. "Killian, you said 'you all make it back'. What happens to you?"

"_Swan,"_ Killian's tone warned that he'd rather not answer.

"Killian," she pressed.

"_Apparently I have the audacity to die in the first round. I miss all the fun."_

"How?"

"_He has yet to elaborate but the lass did say I'd make a fine appetizer."_

"Keep reading. I have to go figure out how much to tell the rest of town."

"_I know what you're thinking, Swan, but didn't we learn a pointed lesson about changing past events?"_

She clenched the radio so hard, her knuckles turned white. "It's not the past, it's the future. There's a difference."

"_It's the past to Henry."_

"Just. Keep. Reading."

Emma shoved the radio back into her waistband. Heat filled her face and she found herself wiping tears she hadn't realized were falling. Taking a moment to steel herself, she made three quick decisions. First, she'd only tell the town the bare minimum they needed to know to stay safe. Second, this _scourge_ ended here, if it was the last thing she did. And third, Killian Jones was, on no uncertain terms, allowed to die.

-0-

Henry, whose tender heart rarely openly expressed violent emotion, full out shouted at Lillian. His cream navy uniform and red brocade coat—red coats which had trickled into military uniform code ever since Emma Swan returned to take her place among the high royalty—added a sharp edge of authority to his every movement, his every word and, at present, his very glare. Lillian, who rarely shrank from anything, stood with hands behind her back and shoulders slumped. She felt dirty and small in comparison, her own brown leather forest gear, still grimy with sweat and tree sap, clashed with the ordered cleanliness of the captain's quarters.

Reckless. Thoughtless. Dangerous. Cavalier.

She rather liked that last one, but coming from Henry, it hurt.

"Henry, I…"

"No. No, Lily. You were sent here under my care to keep you safe. How am I supposed to do that when you disappear in the middle of the night? If we hadn't gone looking for you, where would you be right now?"

Lillian's heart sunk further. _Henry_, she wanted to say. _I'm not here because I'm in danger, I'm here because I'm a bad memory in a time where bad memories get people killed._

But she said nothing and Henry kept on with his speech. "Keeping you safe now means teaching you some discipline. This crew has rules. This _family_ has rules."

Lillian stared at the grain of the table in front of her. Oh, this again. She was _supposed_ to go with a team. She was _supposed_ to run at the slightest sign of trouble. She was _supposed_ to be a good little Charming or a brave little Swan.

But that was the material difference between her and Henry.

He was a Swan, son of the savior queen.

She was just the little orphan Jones.

BOOM.

She braced as a pile of hardbound journals slammed on the table, snapping her back to attention. "I recognize that look in your eye, Lily," Henry hissed, walking to a drawer close to his bed. He opened it, pulled out a few items, and shoved it closed angrily. "You don't want to listen to me anymore. Fine. Maybe you'll listen to this," the young captain held out a folded up piece of the whitest paper Lillian had ever seen. "Before Killian died, he left me a key to decoding his old logs. This war went very bad very quickly and we lost a lot of people. There are few left who remember him and, because of that, you've lost out on a lot. For that, I'm sorry, but it is no excuse. You want to keep playing the lone maverick, great. See where that gets you. But if you want to learn something about a ship, about duty, about your family—you won't find a better teacher." On top of the journals he placed the paper and, with little ceremony, the nicked and worn hook of Killian Jones.

"Henry…"

"No," Henry straightened, his gaze lingering on the hook before returning to Lillian's. His temper had cooled, but his authority remained. "From now on, on this ship, it's not Henry. It's Captain Swan. And unless it's an apology, you don't speak to me again until you've read _all_ of this."

"Cap…"

"Not. One. Word."

Lips pressed tightly together, Lillian pulled a small pouch from her pocket and held it out to Henry. He let his glare sink in for another heartbeat before he took it and examined the contents. Pixie dust. Hard to find in the new Neverland, and enough to keep the ship in flight for quite some time, at least by their methods.

Lillian raised her eyebrow questioningly.

The young captain closed the pouch tightly and nodded subtly. "Good work, Lily. But bad form."

-0-

"_Emma, it gets worse."_

"Are you kidding me?" Emma leaned her head against the tile wall of the small bathroom she'd slipped into when she heard Killian click the radio for attention. She had finally talked the town off the proverbial ledge, set up a security detail with Mother Superior, and convinced at least half the residents to bed down for the night. Regina hesitantly agreed to defend the town hall, for Henry's sake, of course. Gold took watch at the hospital, being the only person she knew this thing was afraid of. Things were finally starting to settle, she didn't need more bad news.

"_It's not just the Enchanted Forest, it's all the realms. Or at least all the realms future Henry knows about. They all fall except two—the Enchanted Forest and Neverland."_

"Minimal population, maximum magic exposure. Neverland would be like a desert to this thing."

"_Henry speculates similarly. As the scourge grows more powerful in the Enchanted Forest, it gets faster, stronger, and harder to kill, even with the aid of magic. Henry goes to Neverland to build his secret weapon."_

"The ship?"

"_Lee was right, he turns it into a bloody warship. He wants to make a fleet to take back the realms."_

"A fleet of magic, flame-throwing battleships," Emma almost laughed, "yep, that sounds like Henry."

-0-

After about fifteen tries, Lillian all but gave up on the first page of the pirate logs. Head aching with the sheer extent of rules, symbols and synthetic grammar in Hook's books, she slumped face down on the open page and sighed.

"Doing a little research on the family tree, dearie?"

Lillian sat up, deftly closing the book with one hand before registering the presence of Rumplestiltskin. She idly lifted the book and tapped it on the table. "Charming and Snow are gone. The only parents I knew are dead. All I have left are rumors," she let the book drop flat on the table with a look of irritation, "and mystery."

"I'll save you some trouble. There wasn't much mystery to your father, it's your mother that boggles me. But," he giggled, throwing a finger in the air playfully. "Never say that I was never a team player. The captain wants you to learn a little discipline, and I am happy to oblige."

"Henry sent you?"

"Of course not, dearie. He believes in you. I, however, am a bit of a skeptic. Don't take it personally. In fact, I'll teach you something even your father would approve of. Lesson number one," the scaly green man's demeanor darkened. "You don't leave the ship without your captain's permission."

Lillian felt a tingling sensation in her feet and, for a moment, couldn't even lift them from the floor. She turned a dark glare of her own on the snickering man.

"Lesson two—and really this is more of an ad lib on my part—if you ever do anything to endanger Henry's life," Rumplestiltskin gritted his teeth in a humorless smile, "I will wipe you from existence, Lillian Jones."


	7. Red Flags

"'**Proud and insolent youth,' said Hook, 'prepare to meet they doom.'  
'Dark and sinister man,' Peter answered, 'have at thee!'"  
_-Peter Pan_**

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Red Flags**

The next several months in Neverland passed like an uneasy dream. During daylight, Lillian worked on the ship, all flurry and scurry to arm the ancient vessel. During darker hours, her mind filled with ciphers and ship secrets and scant allusions to phantoms from the distant past. The decrypting crept along with disappointing payoff—knowing the ending made the pressed and calculating vengeance of Hook's own years in Neverland seem hollow—wasted—and she began to lose interest, but the forced diligence distracted her from the smallness of her floating cage. Most of the time.

She had now acquired a proper kit, with all the pomp befitting a royal sailor but wearing it felt like suffocation itself. She hated red, as a matter of principle, but the uniform made Henry happy and happiness, well, that's the rarest commodity in wartime, wasn't it? He considered it the color of Emma's courage. She would rather rip it off and toss it overboard. In fact, the day Henry taught her to fly _the Jolly Roger_, pressing her hands to the helm and encouraging her with that boyish smile to think a happy thought, she envisioned just that—throwing red-dyed lies to the winds to be torn far away from even faintest memory.

Lillan had no queen, and she most certainly hadn't a "savior". The ship floated with her widening smile. Neverland, it seemed, had a sick sense of humor.

"Have you figured it out yet," Henry asked, "why I made you read the journals?"

"I doubt twenty-seven variants of dreamshade poison will be terribly useful in our case," she replied dryly.

The young captain folded his arms in a (possibly intentional) way that evoked Charming. "So you would see that you can spend lifetimes wallowing in bitterness and rage and never find the bottom..." he leaned in for effect, "Lily, forgive her."

Lillian's knuckles whitened against the wooden wheel and the ship dropped perceptibly, "Never."

"You know the rules," Henry put hand to the helm and the vessel righted and rose, _"never say never in Neverland."_

-0-

Lee lay in bed in a private hospital room, one arm handcuffed to the bed, the other, fractured, lay in a soft cast across her stomach. Monitors beeped regularly and her breath remained shallow and steady, showing no evidence of consciousness, nor any awareness of Gold's presence in her room.

"I warned you, dearie," he growled, "time to disappear."

Gold walked up to Lee's bedside, studying the sleeping girl's bruised features. She had tumbled down the dock's rough stairs in the attack, whether by accident or drunken fumbling; leaving much of her body battered and discolored. It was a wonder Regina didn't incinerate the girl, too, and let the whole town be done with it all.

Ah, yes. Because Henry was watching. Watching the fool girl nearly end everything. Decades of careful planning and she upends the chessboard in one drunkard's swipe. But then, how could he expect less? Apples falling from trees and such.

Why? Why in all the realms? Why _her?_

With a wave of Gold's hand, the room's only door sealed itself. He slowly pressed the handle of his cane to a fresh welt just below her neck. Lee woke suddenly, with a grunt, sucking air reflexively.

The thin steel grey slits of her eyes met his and she croaked, "you again?"

"Your captain," Gold hissed, pulling back on the cane only slightly. "His name. Now."

The girl raised an eyebrow, but even that subtle movement seemed painful and she suddenly scrunched her eyes closed. "I think present circumstances explain themselves quite clearly, don't you?"

"I want to hear it from your lips."

"Oh, there are plenty of things I'd like to say to you-" Lee retorted, risking a smirk. Gold leaned his weight into the cane. The girl gasped, crumpled, and struggled against her restraint before finally crying "Henry" through gritted teeth.

Gold bent over her until their faces nearly touched, cold anger simmering in his voice, "Tell me. How does he _die_?"

The girl's eyes rimmed red even as her lips curled in a snarl. "He died in battle! We were at war!"

"No, you had something to do with it, that's why you're here instead of him. It was _supposed_ to be _Henry._"

Lee returned a seething glare. "All my life I've dealt with your schemes and it all ended in dust. I am done with you, Rumplestiltskin! I. Am. Done."

"All the darkness in the known realm swirling around that one point in time, the _final_ point in time, obscuring even _my_ vision," Gold swung the cane up, over his head. "You are the only one who has seen it, but don't think I can't pull it from you like meat off a bone!" Gold slammed the cane down on her fractured arm and Lee howled. Someone beat at the door, but it would not budge. Again and again, the cane found tender flesh. Again and again, Lee choked back cries of pain. Again and again, she wished, for anything, that it _had_ been Henry.

-0-

Fog coated the Neverland waters but Lillian held her own kind of cloudiness within. She'd read through the lost year in the Enchanted Forest and the change in his character was evident even in his script, rash and impatient, and she could just smack Henry sometimes, because that was where the books ended, at least for Captain Hook. Restlessly searching for Emma Swan.

Like father, like daughter. Only Lillian had long ago accepted defeat.

Again, smacking Henry came to mind.

"Careful, Lily," Henry warned, and Lillian shook back to attention back to the helm. The captain motioned at the dim, ghost-like image of a ship approaching through the fog, masts and canvas looming through the dismal grey. "There's another behind us."

There were only a few ships left floating in the whole of the realm, and all of them belonged to the pirates.

Henry's brow furrowed. "What are they thinking, coming after us like this? They know we can outrun anything—we can fly, they can't."

"Maybe they think we're out of dust?"

"Possible," he brooded distantly. "Get us airborne," he commanded, "let's hope they back off."

Lillian obeyed and the ship lifted into the air. The two ships passed harmlessly beneath them without even a shot fired.

"Something isn't right," Henry whispered, mostly to himself, "why try that when they know we can go..."

Too late, they both looked up. Out of the fog above dove another ship on full-tilt collision course. Lillian and Henry both heaved the wheel but even _the Jolly Roger_ couldn't avoid the inevitable. Hull met masts, _the Jolly Roger_ lurched sideways and both ships crashed into the sea.

Only by some combination of magic and sheer force of will did the pirate-turned-warship avoid sinking altogether, bobbing violently as if to shake off its attacker. With a tremendous groan and a terrible shudder, the masts splintered and rigging snapped, whipping around dangerously before sliding off into the water as the enemy vessel sank quickly. The rest of _the Jolly Roger_ righted, but by that time, the two remaining ships flanked the damaged vessel on either side.

Lillian, who only remained planted at the helm by the aid of Rumple's curse, and Henry, who only remained by having held on to her, looked out on a deck nearly cleared of all crew. Those that weren't killed in the initial impact flailed helplessly in the waters. Dark figures lined the rails of the enemy ships, drawing bows on the thrashing sailors.

"No!" Henry screamed and a dozen arrows turned on him.

Lillian clung to the wheel and tried to will the ship back into the air, but it only cracked and moaned in reply. She hadn't time to deduce why. Strings snapped, arrows flew, and happy thoughts vanished forever from Lillian's darkening sight.


	8. Dark Horizon

_This is it. This is the nasty little chapter that popped into my head and ruined things for everyone. I cannot be held accountable for the actions of this plot bunny. Unless, of course, you like it. Then it was totally my plan from the start._

* * *

"**There is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies."  
_-Peter Pan_**

* * *

**Chapter Eight: The Dark Horizon**

"It just ends," Killian explained into his radio, pulling open drawers around the cabin with his hook, but finding little of interest or use. He had finished the journals but still yearned for more information, the story incomplete. "The upgrades to _the Jolly Roger_ were all but finished, he was anxious to get back to the Enchanted Forest. Whatever happened, he didn't see it coming."

"_Anything else?" _Emma replied.

"That depends," a near endless number of the ship's hiding spots popped into his mind, too many to search alone in any convenient amount of time. Worse still, he hadn't a clue what exactly he was looking for. "Does the name Tiger Lily mean anything to you?"

Emma sounded surprised, _"You mean it doesn't to you?"_

His shoulders slumped and he rubbed the round of his hook over an eye to massage a vein. "No, not that _ridiculous_ tale again!"

"_Uh, let me think,"_ Emma mumbled in thought. _"She's a princess in Neverland. Almost murdered by,"_ she paused warily, _"…pirates. Why do you ask?"_

"It's a code name Henry gives to one of his crew," Killian's eyes swept the room again, thinking of any hiding place on the ship big enough to hide papers, books or scrolls—anything that might give him a further peek into the fractured future.

"_Do you think it's Lee?"_

"Can't be sure as yet, but best keep her away from Rumplestiltskin for the time being. Apparently they mix like oil and water."

"_I have to play referee now? Who else are we going to get to stand guard if Lee turns out to have this psycho-virus..."_ Emma's voice trailed off. _"Hold on a minute…"_

"Swan?"

"_Gotta go,"_ she replied curtly, _"Whale's calling."_

Frustrated, Killian awkwardly stuffed the radio into his coat pocket. Still so many unanswered questions, even more possible places to hide the answers. He scratched the back of his head in thought. His best shot at finding anything quickly meant he had to stop thinking like himself—grizzled, calculating, even dubious—and think like Henry—clever, sentimental and a little naïve.

The kind of person who might still use the first hiding spot he ever learned, back when they left Neverland, a lifetime ago. Back when Henry was just Emma's boy, doing his best not to cower in his presence, and he was just Captain Hook apologizing for putting him in danger.

He walked over to a set of drawers by the bed. Opening them, he immediately pulled out a spare blanket, tossed it away, lifted out the false bottom to reveal a stash of papers, photos and mementos.

"Come on, Henry, my boy," he whispered, "tell me another story."

-0-

Hands on her chest brought bursts of pain and Lillian would have struck out if she had the strength. She only managed to rasp and gurgle, willing her eyes to open. The fog had dissolved, but her mind still drifted in a haze, slowly breaking corporeal ties, pulling free of the pain. Incomparable, inconsolable, interminable spasms of agony rippled over her body. She could make out two arrows sticking out of her torso. She suspected more sunk into her lower limbs, but she couldn't move to confirm, her body already limp with fatal resignation. She could only lie there, fading.

Just a bad memory, fading away.

Far above, a lone, dark cloud swirled wildly, fashioning into the unmistakable form of a portal. Almost too fast to perceive, a massive bird dove through, spreading its wings as soon as it cleared the vortex and careened away. The portal disappeared as quickly as it came.

_So it's finally over, then,_ she thought to herself, when another movement caught her attention.

Blonde hair cascaded around Lillian's vision as an aging Emma Swan peered down into her eyes. Everything blurred into a wash of gold and ivory and green and Lillian knew tears rolled down her face but she had no capacity to wipe them away.

Here, at the end—too weak to fight, too weak to lie, too weak to run—Lillian, dying, resigned to hated truth.

"Momma," she sobbed weakly.

"Oh, oh. Hey. Stay still," Emma warned. "You've lost a lot of blood."

Lillian thought of Charming and Snow and now Henry—the noble family, now the noble dead. "So have you," she replied.

Emma continued as if the girl hadn't spoken. "I can help you, but I have to get these things out of you first," she put one hand to Lillian's chest and her pain spasms muted to a dull tingling. With the other, she began working the arrows out, clutching one in her gut until it disintegrated then waving a hand over the wound. "What's your name?"

"It's Lillian, Momma," she whimpered, knowing it a pointless response. Lillian felt a warmth from within at Emma's touch, like sunshine and soapy bathwater, and little by little, strength swept away suffering.

Again, Emma heard nothing. "It's okay. You're afraid. I understand, but you're going to be okay, I promise. Please, what can I call you?"

With renewed strength slowly ebbing back, Lillian sunk easily into old, steady lies.

"Tiger Lily, Milady."

"Tiger Lily?" a faint look of recognition passed over Emma's face. "Right, Charming's ward. He sent you here, I remember now," Emma gave her a brief, sad smile. "It's nice to finally to meet you, circumstances aside." A second arrow came free of Lillian's leg, and Emma moved her attention to the last arrow, a shallow shot just below the collarbone.

"We've met a thousand times," Lillian murmured. And they had. And every time Emma gave her that same look she gave her now—sympathy—the look of one orphan to another, but never a mother to a daughter, "you just can't remember."

Still, Emma heard only silence. The last arrow dissolved like the popping of soap bubbles. Emma patted a hand over Lillian's heart. "Looks like you owe your life to this," she said, reaching into the breast pocket of Lillian's coat and pulling out the hook Lillian kept there. "Blocked the arrow from going between your ribs. Lucky."

"Yes, Milady," Lillian mechanically replied and, all pain erased, moved to sit up.

And would have gladly stood in the way of a second volley to erase the sight of Henry, lifeless, barely an arm's length away.

"How…" came tumbling from Lillian's lips as she took in the half dozen arrows sticking out of his still and broken form. Rage flared from deep within her and Lillian turned it full blast on the savior queen. "HOW can you be so calm?" she spat, half pushing Emma away, half scrambling to her feet. "HOW? Have you forgotten him, too?"

Shocked, Emma's mouth hung agape a moment before responding with equal fury and offense. "Forget? How could I forget _my own son?_ How could I forget this?" She waved a hand over the gruesome scene, eyes reddening with tears. "Of course it kills me, but there is still a way to save him," older eyes turned back to the younger, determination burning within them, "to save everyone."

Eyes so red with her own tears that grey steel turned piercing blue, the girl muttered dejectedly, "Milady, what hope could we possibly have left?"

Emma set her jaw. "I can go back, I can change all this."

Lillian went rigid, but Emma kept on.

"For too long I've been afraid to even attempt it, too afraid that I could make things worse, but my family is dead, my parent's kingdom is gone and now all the realms are done for. There can be no worse future than this."

"Too late for that, I'm afraid," came Rumplestiltskin's icy, cutting voice. Lillian didn't see him arrive, but he leaned against the railing just above the steps to the quarter deck. Even his green skin paled as he looked to Henry's body.

Emma whirled on him, eyes alight with conviction. "I can do it. I know I can. I _have _to."

"Oh, you _can_," Rumplestiltskin replied, holding up a hand. "But you can't. Ironically, opening the portal is the easy part. Defending it, now that's the problem. You open a time portal and you give the scourge a straight shot into the un-expecting past, especially if one or both of us go through, as it will assuredly follow. Let the scourge through a portal, at full strength and unaffected by realm travel, it'll wipe out our very existence in the blink of an eye." Another portal opened in the distance and another dark form flew out and away. Rumplestiltskin slowly walked toward the two women. "Even if you could get through free and clear, you're singularly incapable of carrying out the task. The best chance of stopping the scourge is to destroy it before it can make its first kill." The thin man came face to face with the queen. "Tell me, Emma, who was the first victim of the scourge all those long years ago?"

"Regina. I was there."

"Wrong, dearie," Rumple's anger flared through his voice. "You can't do this because you can't remember Hook." He pointed a finger at the steel piece Emma still held in her hand.

"Can't remember what?" she urged, looking to Rumplestiltskin but handing the hook back to Lillian.

"Exactly."

Lillian's looked to the ground in dismay, leaning on the helm of the ruined ship, half-wishing Emma had let her die in peace.

"So that's it, then?" Emma shot back. "We just give up? We're out of options?"

"Out of good options, yes," Rumplestiltskin took a step back. "Out of all options, no."

Emma looked about ready to punch the man. "Enough with the riddles!"

"Send the girl."

Emma balked. "Send a girl I just met on a mission to reset the past and save the very existence of the realms? How is that fair?"

"It's the scourge to end all realms. Did you really expect a fair fight?" Rumplestiltskin's face turned deadly serious. "Your only other option is to stay here, do nothing, and die. Even I would rather chance _mostly_ certain doom at the hand of the pirate's spawn than certain doom at the hands of the scourge. You and I defend the portal. She's nothing to the scourge, a mere ant, not even worthy of squashing compared to ourselves," he glanced at Lillian again. "Or most anyone, but that's splitting hairs."

Emma opened her mouth to protest, but Lillian's voice won out. "I'll do it. Even if it kills me, I'll do it."

Rumplestiltskin smirked, "I thought you'd say something like that."

He waved a hand and the ship lurched and bobbed. The waters around them rose unnaturally and, with a great sound of water crashing, the soaked and splintered masts rose from the depths of the sea, rigging and all. Like a massive puzzle, the ship snapped back together and, in a whirlwind of smoke, appeared as if nothing had happened. The man bowed slightly to Emma, who then slowly pulled a wand from her sleeve. Soberly, she aimed, it glowed, and a beam like golden fire erupted from the sea and the water began to swirl around it. Soon caught in the flow of motion, _the Jolly Roger_ floated toward the light like a dog eager for exercise.

Lillian instantly grabbed the wheel, but turned her head toward the sorcerer. "Rumplestiltskin, what about the curse?"

"Don't worry, you just keep to that ship and he's sure to come to you," his smirk turned menacing again, "consider it insurance."

A screech from above cut off any further conversation. One of the massive winged scourge banked overhead.

"Come now, Emma. I believe we have some hell to raise."

They disappeared in a puff of smoke, taking Henry with them, and Lillian was again alone, but alive, and indeed, ready to rip apart the pernicious past.


	9. Follow the Light

**"Dreams do come true if only we wish hard enough.  
You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it."**  
**-Peter Pan**

* * *

Gold stepped back, cane clattering to the floor. He absently felt for the wall to steady himself.

"_I _sent you? To save the _pirate_?"

"To save your grandson," Lillian corrected hoarsely, voice rasping with the effort. Slumped on her side, vision unable to focus, her eyes drifted shut. Weakly, she added, "That was our only common ground. He was the only family I had left either."

The pounding at the door continued in spurts, but Gold's racing mind drowned out all extraneous noise. The further he looked to the future, the more fragmented the puzzle. The farthest edge, where Henry died, lay shrouded in darkness through which even the Dark One could not penetrate. Like an approaching hurricane, the darkness, the scourge, raged across time's dim horizon, taunting him in his dreams, in the nightmares of the blackest soul. He returned in kind, harnessing the one thing, the one power at his disposal to manipulate the winds and gales of time. His mind, so long as it remained his and alive, need only hold to a decision, hold to one course, to return from the hidden eye of the storm the thing most apt to avert oblivion, to bring back precious knowledge.

Only now had he seen a way, Emma's chance adventure through time left her power coveted for years beyond measure. And in seeing, he decided, and in deciding, he acted—his will stretching forward in time to grab the one thing both he and Emma would protect above all else—Henry—but he had pulled back the wrong child.

And still the scourge laughed. Through Lillian's every breath, it teased. The boy's death was neither accident nor negligence; thirty years planning dashed on the cusp of execution with an execution. The mystery unraveling in his mind, Gold felt haunted by the girl's words, by the message from his enemy, from the depths of the storm toward which all present time barreled.

_The only family left…_

The emphatic pounding stopped, replaced by a soft, familiar voice.

"Rumple?"

_Belle._

Still his enemy taunted. Whatever future he endured beyond the veil, in shrouded time, Belle would never see it. Gold leaned his full weight against the wall and let go his hold on the room. The door burst open.

Belle and Emma half fell into the room, Emma clutching her gun, as if it would make any difference, and Belle, clutching his dagger, and trembling as if it couldn't. The fake itself could not, but in that moment, her look of deep concern, his heart broke for her, and he held still.

While Emma debated holding her ground or going to the girl, Belle's eyes fell on blood and bruises and brokenness and Gold only then began to feel the impact of his desperate rage. "Rumple, what's going on?"

At the same moment Hook whirled around the corner, cutlass drawn. At the sight of Lillian, he pointed the business end in Gold's direction. "Dear Belle, don't you know a torture session when you see one?"

Without hesitation, Belle pivoted, back turned toward Gold and dagger challenged blade.

"I'm sure _you _would," Belle retorted. "And I'm still not afraid of you."

-0-

Emma chanced a glance at Killian, still trying to discern the room's greatest threat. Gold? Lee? The _idiot _with the sword who was clearly _not helping_. "Killian, you were supposed to stay with the ship."

"Oh, believe you me, this is far more important." Killian slowly slid the flat of the cutlass against the curved dagger, letting steel hiss his anger.

Belle held firm. "I'm here now. _Nothing_ is going to happen."

At Belle's voice, the girl stirred again. "Who…?" She rasped softly, trying to pull herself to an elbow, as if hearing something unexpected. Emma took that window to move to her side. "Who is here?" She blinked several times at Belle, as if trying to place her. "Who is she?"

"That's Belle, Gold's wife," Emma replied, trying to sound intimidating to mask the panic in her voice. She couldn't count all the bad ways this scenario could end, but with Gold seemingly pacified for the moment, she focused on evaluating the girl. She hoped against hope that her superpower could detect the manifestation of soul-sucking evil. "She'll restrain him as long as you're not a threat, but the two of you need to start giving me answers about what's going on here."

Lee turned to share a look with Gold, her end a knowing question, his end a guarded nod. "You married again?"

"How about you tell us what's going on," Emma offered, trying to regain Lee's attention, "then we can get you out of here."

"Leave?" Lee tried to laugh, but erupted into a brief coughing fit and she wiped a trickle of blood from the edge of her mouth. "When I've… finally convinced… Rumplestiltskin to help me?"

Now it was Emma who looked to Gold, who put an arm to Belle's shoulders. "It's all right," he nodded. "Lower it. The girl is no danger."

Slowly, Belle lowered the dagger. Killian paused, wary, but fluidly slipped the cutlass back into its sheath. In the fraction of a moment it took him to join Emma at her side, Gold waved a hand. The girl glowed warmly—body mending, wounds fading, color returning—until no trace of either torture or tumble remained. Killian gave Gold a brief, sideways look of cold acknowledgment.

Emma began undoing the restraint. "Lee. Tiger Lilly. Whatever your name is-"

"Lillian," Killian added. "Her name's Lillian."

The girl jolted, fixating on Killian. "You _know_?"

"Know what?" Emma asked, pulling the restraint free, but the girl only wordlessly reached forward, grabbed him by the vest and pulled him into a bear hug. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, sobbing into his chest.

"Come now, Swan, can't you see it?" Killian said as he put a gentle hand to the girl's head, rings nestling among the dark strands.

Caught off guard by the girl's sudden emotion, Emma's mind blanked and she couldn't fathom what he had meant. It was the same girl they had met only a day before, only now she wore a hospital gown instead of her sailor garb. The dress of the various fairy tale realms always looked more like costumes to her—beautiful, exquisite outfits—but still costumes to her denim-and-cotton-tank tastes. Here, in a modern context, she looked more… real, relatable, and even youthful with her dark hair loose and sprawling down her back. A few strands, wetted by tears, stuck to her cheek and Killian gently pulled them back. Lee—no, Lillian—blinked wildly as the hair pulled away from her eyes and Emma caught glimpse of bright blue between brown lashes and something changed. Then it was a subtle movement of her brow, a familiar curling of her lip, the angle of her nose. Side by side with Killian, the similarities multiplied like constellations connecting before searching eyes. Lillian. Killian. The sparkle of an eye, the glint of a tear, little lights in a vast expanse, burning, all gleaming homeward.

"Killian, is she…?"

"Yes, love," he smiled holding an arm out for her in invitation. "Come, hug your daughter. She's come a very long way to find us."


	10. Close Quarters

_Sorry again for the wait, I was very sick most of this week. You could probably sail a ship on the amount of soup and sweet tea I've consumed. This chapter turned into such a beast, I've had to chop it up, so I may actually get another one out today, and that one will have a little more action._

* * *

"**All are keeping a sharp look-out in front,  
but none suspects that the danger may be creeping up from behind."  
**_**-Peter and Wendy**_

* * *

**Chapter Ten: Close Quarters**

Emma shifted the straps of a cooler bag higher up on her shoulder as she hurried down the dock. Despite the early afternoon hour, few but Mother Superior's finest walked the streets. With most of the town still on lockdown, Granny's was closed, but thankfully Mary Margaret stockpiled enough leftovers from the potluck to feed a small army. She had marveled at Mary Margaret's mom-ness as she had quickly packed up quite the picnic while Emma updated her—and therefore the town—about the day's developments. Well, most of them. She braced at a twinge of guilt; instincts forged from her own foray through time nudged her to keep quiet about coming events, which meant not telling her parents the full truth about Lillian. As far as the Charming's and the rest of Storybrooke were concerned, the girl was still just a traveler from another realm helping with the fight.

Still, Emma had to admit a certain element of _convenient, _rather than necessary, motivation to her story. She'd been running on emotion and pure adrenaline for weeks now. Suddenly meeting _her own grown daughter,_ she sympathized with Mary Margaret on yet another unexpected level and it was like another piece of straw on the proverbial camel and she just _couldn't deal_ with it all right now. She _was_ tired of living in the past but neither had she planned on immediately facing what was supposed to be a possible and far off eventuality. Somehow distant destiny seemed far more immediate when she had to feed it breakfast.

And, honestly, it freaked her out a bit. At least with Henry, there had been, well, _prerequisites. _But Lillian? Completely out of left field. Moreover, telling Mary Margaret about Lillian pretty much meant telling Mary Margaret about Killian. Not that she regretted anything, but given the circumstances, now seemed like a ridiculously bad time. Lillian and this present crisis came first. Her—what—love life? That came second.

And it wasn't stalling if she had a legitimate reason, right?

Pushing her thoughts aside, Emma jogged up the ship's steps, crossed the deck in a few quick strides and descended the stairs to the captain's quarters. Lillian sat at the table, head in hands. Her coat and shirt had been too ripped and bloodied to function, so she instead wore Emma's coat with her linen trousers. Killian sat close by, idly sorting through a pile of parchments and mementos. Gold and Belle stood at a respectful distance, speaking in heated whispers.

Emma heaved the bag onto the wooden table and unzipped the lid. "I assume they still have chicken salad in the future?" She pulled free a bagged sandwich and a thermos from and handed them to Lillian. At a subtle look from Killian, she defended, "it's just sweet tea, I swear. I figure a little sugar and caffeine might do some good."

She could hear Gold's eye-roll. "Hardly a crime, but still a tragedy."

-0-

The hallway floor shuddered so violently beneath her as she ran that Lillian collapsed to the stone floor midstride. Confused, she looked around. Morning light flooded through the open archway nearby. Dawn broke hours ago, bringing with it sunlight and relative safety, hadn't it?

A grating roar sounded and Regina's former palace shook again.

She crawled cautiously to the archway, biting back a scream of her own when she caught the sight of a thorny, dragon-like form snaking across the sky, so massive that its black wings swathed the landscape in shadow. Its wings tucked in abruptly and the great form now barreled toward the castle.

A blinding light flashed with an angry hiss of protective magic as the creature bounced off powerful shielding. Another livid roar and Lillian felt her very soul rattle.

The creature lashed at the shield with its tail. Defying the crackling and sizzling of the magic defenses, it settled onto the invisible dome, dark wings curled around the shielding until it nearly blotted out the sky.

Below lay the open courtyard at the heart of the palace. Charming dashed along the defenses, sunlight glinting off his steel armor as he shouted indistinct orders. Soldiers scrambled to wheel out cannons, prototypes built in secret—no one would say where from—but it had Henry's mark to it. Though she hadn't seen her hidden brother in years, wherever he was, he was making progress.

The scourge rammed its tail against the shielding once more. With a flash and a crackle the shield fizzled away.

In a blur almost too fast for sight, the black beast dove into the courtyard and rose again with bloodied claws and the king's breastplate crunched between its teeth. Below, Charming sprawled, crimson darkening his torso and Lillian's own breath stopped. No desperate command in her panicked mind could will her lungs to fill.

Struggling to stand, Charming stumbled, dazed, then took up his sword and, in a wild flash of steel and rage, turned it on the men around him. After but a few mad swipes, several suits clattered to the ground in puddles of red, cut down by the very king they swore to protect.

A blur of white streaked from an archway below as Snow White ran to him. Sword met sword—a struggle—but with a kick and a strike, she had him stunned. With her free hand she grabbed his head and pulled him forward. A shockwave burst forth as their lips met and the courtyard brightened, but rather than expand out, it rushed back into itself, back into the couple. Snow slipped, arms still wrapped around her husband's neck, and both fell limp to the ground, dead.

A screech like laughter boomed over the castle as the scourge made another pass, diving at the courtyard, but the cannons were ready this time. Several blasts of flame shot out, streams of fire combining, winding into coils of blazing light. The coil of a vicious, burning cobra.

Great fangs emerged from the mass of light. Snake struck dragon, flames engulfing darkness, and the land shook with the screams of the scourge.

-0-

Lillian hadn't realized her hunger until she started eating, but between bites of cold sandwich and swigs of tea, she recapped the story of her time in Neverland and her coming to Storybrooke. Hook confirmed what bits he'd gleaned from the journals. Gold confessed, too, his decades-long plan to retrieve Henry from the future, though both Lillian and Gold mutually skipped over Emma's absent memory and Hook's early demise. It seemed tidier that way, particularly given the tongue-lashing she dished out at Gold's plot.

"You saw this coming and you didn't say anything?" Emma blurted.

"I saw disparate pieces of an intricate puzzle," Gold returned simply. "That was rather the point of the whole plan, to bring back more information."

"Using _Henry_?"

"Rescuing him. And, to be fair, I only really fleshed out the idea less than two days ago, so pardon me if I'm still playing a little catchup myself."

Unsatisfied, but clearly picking her battles, Emma took a seat close to Lillian. "We've established how you got here, now I want to know why. The whole story."

Lillian made a point of pouring herself another cup of tea. She didn't have much time for details the first time around, nor had she planned on there being much need for them. She set the thermos down, taking a breath before she began. "When the scourge takes a host, it's not a slow process, but it is a process. The first stage is infection, the scourge attempts to bond with the life force of the victim. It has to adapt to them. The resulting conflict draws out madness in the target as it attempts this bond. One's heart, one's emotion, one's very essence rises up against it, but the length of the struggle depends on the person. Those with magic can usually resist becoming a host. Those without are usually powerless, most taken almost immediately. When the scourge wins, the lucky ones are consumed on the spot. The damned few, though, become hosts, incubators for the scourge. Sadly, given enough time, given enough understanding of its host's essence, the scourge learns to bury itself in deepest recesses and the host goes on much as normal. Hiding in plain sight, as they say, but always feeding, always growing. That is what the test does, exposes those that have been recently taken." She paused to take a drink, "though, either way, not even True Love's Kiss can save the taken."

Belle cocked her head to the side and, moving forward, took a seat next to Emma. "I thought True Love's Kiss was the strongest magic."

"Birthed from the strongest emotion," Gold noted. "The very thing with which you try to kill it is the very thing by which it lives."

Lillian's thoughts drifted to black wings and white light before a hand on her arm brought her back. Emma leaned toward her, concerned. "In my timeline," she continued. "There was no warning. The first of the scourge took a host unnoticed, quietly sapping strength for years before it arose." She hesitated when Hook glanced up, but he said nothing. "When it did, even Regina couldn't stand against it. She died fighting the scourge so that the curse could be undone, dissolving Storybrooke and sending everyone back in the hopes that that, without Storybrooke, without magic, the scourge would die." Lillian slowly swirled the cup on the table, wishing it held something stronger, "perhaps it would have, but no one knew it could portal right along behind. When it did, it found a wider hunting ground that it could have hoped for. It consumed the pain of the Enchanted Forest, growing stronger, faster, and deadlier until it could even outrun magic."

"That's why you needed _the Jolly Roger_," Hook murmured, "the ship that outran the curse."

Lillian nodded. "Most were so desperate to get away that anyone who had access to a portal used it to get to whatever land they could, but they only succeeded in spreading the scourge to other lands, which only made it harder to defeat."

Emma's brow furrowed. "How so? I thought it half killed this thing to jump realms."

"True, it does, but the scourge isn't a singular being, not in my time. That is why it was essential to catch it early. With enough energy, the scourge can multiply, though it does so strategically, usually when it means take another realm. Both realm jumping and multiplying, take their toll. If it can find access to a proper portal, it travels largely unaffected, as we do. Otherwise, when it is powerful enough, the scourge creature takes another host, replicating itself through that host until one or the other is strong enough to generate its own portal."

Hook lifted a brow. "No wonder it seemed so bloody hard to kill."

"The scourge spreading itself thin was the only reason Henry had the chance to slip away secretly with the ship to Neverland. Almost no one outside the crew even knew of his mission, for fear of the scourge taking someone with knowledge of the plan. Multiples of the scourge in the same realm are a very bad sign, it means it found something it wants, desperately. And here we've fought two so far. The first that attacked you and Emma, the second that infected me."

She regretted the admission before it even left her lips. The three other heads at the table shot up.

"Wait, infected?" Emma's voice turned sharp, but to Lillian's surprise, she didn't pull away.

"It drew blood, of course I was infected. That's how the scourge works."

Hook's voice rumbled with wariness as well, his eyes holding a hint of disbelief. "Someone quite explicitly told me being infected meant getting one's head blown off."

"So I believed at the time. There is no hope for the _taken_, for the hosts, but never have I seen the scourge so slow and weak that it could be killed during the _bonding _process." Lillian's eyes fell to the table. How such simple information changed things. Broke things. Recast the past in the dismal light of lost hope. "We certainly had theories, but this is the first proof I have ever seen that it was actually possible."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Emma tilted her head, a shift in her green eyes signaling the importance of Lillian's answer, "but how do we know you're really in the clear?"

She looked directly into her mother's gaze. Something bitter and fierce did lurch in her gut, though unrelated to their screeching terror of an enemy, she pressed it down and locked it away. "Besides the fact that I've not only just had breakfast with my long dead father, but reiterated the tragic downfall of known existence after being caned half to death by the Dark One himself?"

Hook shrugged. "Fair point."

Emma, though, stared a bit too long to have accepted the answer at face value. She leaned back, releasing Lillian's arm.

Belle broke the awkward silence. "So if it can multiply, as you say, and portal to other realms, can we ever know if we've killed it once and for all, or will we always be waiting for another instance to attack?"

"Oh, there is a way to know for sure," Gold replied, "but they're not going to like it."


	11. Directions

_I've been sick and on cold medicine going on two weeks now and it's really messing with my capacity to get what's in my head out on the screen. This chapter has been an absolute bear. I'm still not sure I'm quite happy with it, but I already have the bulk of the next two chapters worked out and itching to be posted, so here goes. If you have the time, please review and let me know your thoughts. These "talking heads" chapters are very difficult for me, I really have no idea if things are coming across believably and entertainingly. (That's a word, right?)_

_I'm so grateful to those who have reviewed, liked, followed or reblogged this little tale! You guys really keep me going!_

* * *

**"Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly… After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness…"**  
_**-Peter Pan**_

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: Directions**

Emma turned in her seat to face Gold. "What do you mean we're 'not going to like it'?"

Gold lifted a finger to pause her thought. "Keep in mind you're creating a paradox here, the future reaching back on itself to slap away the hand of fate. _Fundamentally rewriting destiny_ takes a stiff price. The magic will resolve itself like the cutting of a dead limb," he made a swift chopping motion with his hand, "removing one potential branch of the future in its entirety."

Parchment rustled as Killian looked up with narrowed gaze. "When you say entirety…"

"The future as Lillian knows it will cease to exist, of course," Gold responded. "Our destinies will again be free and uncertain." Again, he lifted a hand as if to ward off an argument, "which, I might add, is where you started."

"So what happens to Lillian?" Emma directed the question at Gold, but turned her attention to the young woman. Lillian studied the grain of the table, rubbing a knuckle over an eyebrow.

The older man shifted his stance in thought. "Considering there is a distinct lack of precedent for rewriting time, particularly on this magnitude, it's difficult to say."

That brought on Emma's full glare. "Take a wild guess."

Gold looked to Belle and his features softened. He, too, looked to the young time traveler, who still stared at the table. "When her timeline dissolves, so will she."

"Dissolves?" Emma stood abruptly. "She's a person, not cotton candy."

Rising slowly, Belle put a hand to Emma's shoulder. "There has to be another way, Rumple. You wouldn't have involved Henry if it meant endangering his very existence."

"Henry's birth predates the paradox," Gold replied. "He would have survived it, whatever the repercussions. _That, if nothing else,_ is why it should have been Henry."

"It should have been, but it isn't," Lillian stated plainly, then downed the rest of her tea. "It's me. It's my life on the line and I meant it when I said whatever means necessary."

Blonde hair slipped over Emma's shoulders as she leaned over the table at Lillian. "No, we're your parents. You're not supposed to sacrifice yourself for us, it's supposed to be the other way around."

"I'm not doing it for you," Lillian retorted, rising, not the slightest hint of deception in her eyes. "You wouldn't know this about me but I'm not really one for taking orders. If you're not up for this, I will find my own way if I have to take the ship to a hundred different realms."

"What, _the Jolly Roger_ can jump realms now?" Killian drawled with a smile, trying to ease the tension, but the sincere look on the young woman's face caused him to sit forward. "Really?"

Lillian waved him off with a hand. "Mermaid magic. And no, I'm not telling you how."

"_Mermaid?" _Killian couldn't have looked more disgusted and perplexed if Lillian had clocked him.

Belle turned to Gold again. "What if Emma could use the wand in our time, take us further down the timeline?"

"Even if we could," Gold sighed. "Events in this timeline have already changed. There is no anticipating the timeline now."

"What do you mean?

Lillian stood to her full height, sighing. "There was never more than one scourge in Storybrooke. It was the first to fall under attack and, so we assumed, it was the origin of the scourge. For two to show up means the origin is elsewhere and not only are we no closer to destroying it than we were days ago, but I fear I've only hastened our demise and wasted perhaps the one best shot anyone has ever had of defeating this thing." She leaned against a rough, built in bookcase nearby. "We were so sure it started in Storybrooke…"

"Could we have had something to do with it?" Emma asked, motioning between Killian and herself. "Before we traveled back to the present, we were locked in a vault of dark magic..."

The girl shook her head. "The Rumplestiltskin of my time spent decades researching that very question, to no end. If the scourge didn't come from Storybrooke, or this vault, it hails from some hunting ground we know nothing of."

"The unknown realms?" Belle offered in astonishment. "A possibly infinite number of alternate lands? How are we to even begin searching them?"

Emma pushed her chair in decidedly. "_We_ don't. Not today, anyway. This is way too big for just us now, we have to let the others in on this."

"Mmm, yes," Gold hummed. "Let's just take a dwarf's pick-axe to whatever scrap of this timeline might have been left intact, shall we?"

-0-

Exhausted in every possible meaning of the phrase, Emma slowly crept up the steps from the captain's quarters. The haphazard war council broken for the day—tempers too high, spirits too low and bodies too spent to do any of them much good—they reached a mutual consensus to take a recess, rest up, and hope clearer minds might later prevail. Gold and Belle had left for the shop to locate anything that might help them access, much less search, the unknown realms. Lillian left to find a change of clothes below deck and Killian followed wordlessly shortly after. She'd needed a moment alone to soak in the relative quiet of the docked ship in the silent town, the closest thing to peace she'd felt in some time. But the moment ended quickly and she threw open the hatch above.

Ocean mist swept her hair around in spirals and Emma heard a faint _sploosh_ as her boots met the top stair. With one hand, she pulled the mass of strands out of her face and looked around to find the source of the sound.

_Sploosh. _

Killian stood on the lower deck, facing out to the ocean and away from the late afternoon sun. With his good hand, he systematically reached down into a battered crate full of liquor at his heel, pulled a bottle free and heaved it out across the water.

_Sploosh. _

"This is a change," Emma noted, drawing up to his side.

"One might say it's quite like old times."

Another heave and a _sploosh._

Emma shoved her hands in her pockets, bracing against the whipping wind. "Speaking from experience, the whole kid-popping-out-of-nowhere thing does get easier to deal with. Just give it time."

"Oh, this isn't about that, Swan."

"Right. This is just spring cleaning, then?"

Killian stopped, empty-handed and squared his shoulders with Emma's. "Am I to just turn a blind eye to all that just happened", he waved the bottle in the general direction of Storybrooke. "Rumplestiltskin beating her near to death? Orchestrating all this? Lest you forget, I've been on the other end of that bloody cane too."

"No one is getting away with anything, but the last thing we need right now is a renewed blood feud. He did make a show of good faith, he didn't have to heal her."

"Aye," was Killian's flat reply.

"Well, that was convincing."

Wide shoulders slumped and Killian scratched the nape of his neck. "Apologies, you are right, the stakes are much too high, but even if they weren't, what recourse have I? I can do nothing to truly hurt him without the dagger, and getting to the dagger means going through Belle—_which I'll not do_—but," the sharp edge to his brilliant blues betrayed that he was at least half serious in his plot. "Let's say I could stab him like any father would, what then? Tell me Emma, tell me how that story ends."

"I get it," Emma put a hand to his shoulder, right where it met his neck, and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I get it. You're angry. I am too. But he is helping, and Belle will keep him on a short leash. We can worry about the rest afterwards."

Killian put his good hand over hers. "After she's gone, you mean?" He hadn't meant it as an attack, but it hurt, and Emma withdrew her hand.

With Zelena gone and the timeline set straight, she'd just begun to allow the sliver of a hope that some semblance of a normal life—for a town of fairytales, that is—might emerge from her ashes. But here she stood, looking at a future rife with yet more tragedy, avoidable only with another impossible choice, but no guarantee of happiness for either party.

Would this be the rest of her life? Her kid's lives? Always disjointed and out of order and falling apart just as it came together? Every gain coming only from terrible loss? Even if she changed the course of future events, stopped the scourge, would it make a difference? Would yet another wild darkness emerge?"

"Sorry, love. That came out wrong. Seems we're both exhausted."

"No, no, I get it," Emma rubbed her eyes with her hand. Her brain felt like sludge. "None of us are thinking clearly. I shouldn't have kept all this from my parents, this is way bigger than us, especially now. We can't go gallivanting across the unknown realms without a solid plan." She patted her pant pockets but felt no phone. "Crap, I left it in my coat."

Killian put his hand to her upper arm and returned her squeeze. "No arguments from me, timeline or no, but you're no use to anyone if you drop from exhaustion. Rest first. I'll take care of your parents."

"You really want to be the one to tell my father that we make a little pirate together?"

Killian's smile couldn't hide his wince. "He seems to have finally gotten over the part where I nearly left the whole town for dead. Besides that," he scratched his chin before shrugging, "it's the honorable thing to do."

"It's the suicidal thing to do."

"None the less…"

"Fine," Emma replied with a shrug of her own. "I hope you have a will."


	12. Empty Hourglass

**"'Someday,' said Smee, 'the clock will run down, and then he'll get you…'**  
**'Aye,' [Hook] said, 'that's the fear that haunts me.'"**  
_**-Peter Pan**_

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Empty Hourglass**

The dim light below deck only added to Emma's sleepiness. She followed soft shuffling sounds to the crew quarters, catching sight of Lilian as she slid her arms into a dark leather coat, not nearly as long or flamboyant or intimidating as Killian's, but simple, rugged, and practical. Still, combined with her dark hair, sun warmed features and her own set of leather and linen garments, Emma couldn't fathom how she had missed the resemblance. She startled when she caught sight of a hook—the hook—hanging from a chain around Lillian's neck. Lillian only then noticed her presence and quickly buttoned the coat over the rounded steel.

"I've no objection to taking watch, if that's what you've come about."

"No," Emma blurted, but recovered quickly. "I mean, thank you, but," she glanced around the small quarters. Two piles of bloodied linen uniforms lay balled up on a bunk close by, one ripped clear through with arrow holes, and Emma's gut churned at the recollection of Henry's last hours. She looked away before she lost it. "My jacket," she asked. "Do you have it?"

The girl pulled the jacket from another bunk and handed it off. Emma gave her a soft thank you as she took it and fumbled for the pocket. She found the phone, but couldn't get it to light up. Dead battery, she deduced. On a ship. With no electricity. Perfect.

Lillian continued readying herself in front of a tiny, grubby mirror, deftly working her fingers through her hair to form a long, tight braid.

"I know things got heated earlier," Emma added, slipping her own jacket on, "but I do want to thank you for doing this. Whatever happens, it took courage to come here."

The girl paused, catching her gaze in the mirror, but seeming unable to give a response.

"Which is why," Emma continued, shoving the phone into a pocket, "I have to ask why someone that brave can't be straight with me?"

"Straight?" the girl questioned with a familiar lift of her brow.

"The host this thing takes in Storybrooke. It's Killian, isn't it?"

Lillian tied off her braid and let it drop over her shoulder. "Yes."

Emma crossed her arms, expectantly. "Why leave that out?"

"Because," Lillian looked over her shoulder. "I wasn't going to let it happen again."

"That's why you came back when you did, in your timeline, it had him already," Emma murmured, as much to herself as to the brunette. "What did this thing do to him? How did I not notice?"

Lillian eased herself down onto one of the bunks, facing Emma, but avoiding her gaze. "Many lives were lost, hosts taken, before anyone knew what to look for. Once the scourge settles into a host, it hides deep, manipulating only out of self-preservation. Aside from that, the host continues on as normal. It took years before even the first signs began to show, but as Henry told it, even those were missed. You see," grey eyes trailed back up to meet Emma's with misty honesty, "the spirit wastes and weakens long before the body shows any hint. The older and stronger the soul, the longer it takes, and the greater the scourge becomes. That's why it wanted him then, that's why it wants him now."

Emma said nothing, but lowered herself to an opposite bunk with solemn interest. The girl pulled at her knuckles as she continued.

"The scourge consumes a host in layers, it takes the darkness first; the salt and the sour and the bitterness of the heart. Only after draining all that does it touch what's left: the lightness, the sweetness, the love. Since memories are tied to emotion, as one is consumed, so is the other and each drink the scourge takes from that draught of pain brings a forgetting, a fading of one's darkness," Lillian's voice softened as her eyes again dropped away, "and he had such darkness," she paused, letting the words settle.

Emma thought of the rough heartlessness and smoldering vengeance she'd seen in Killian's—no, Hook's—character. The bitterness of his chiding lilt in Rumplestiltskin's cell. The venom and desperation as he, soaked and broken at the town line, still taunted Gold with strained breath. The crackling malice as he crouched over the man, Hook dripping with blood, fatal poison racing to finish his wicked deed. And who knows what else he'd done in the unspoken centuries past.

"When it faded," Lillian continued, lips wisped with brief contentment, "Henry told me that time was actually the happiest in their lives—your lives together. So many thought—so many wanted to believe—they saw a man renewed by love."

The girl knit her shoulders in a shrug, grabbing her elbows with her hands. "And maybe he was, in a sense. With his—Hook's—long held rage dissipated; a surprising, irrepressible joy emerged from his core, his spirit anchored by sincere and sturdy love. Only when his mind waned and his body failed did they began to suspect something more, but of course, by then, the damage was done. No one could have guessed the truth. No one knew why every day, there was less of him. Why every touch grew weaker. Every laugh, a little lighter. Every smile, like a little goodbye." Lillian's grip tightened until her forearms shook subtly. "It was a gentle death, in the end. After all those centuries of vengeance, he simply faded away, softly, slowly, smiling." She chewed on her lip a moment, waiting for her trembling throat to steady. "The scourge attacked shortly thereafter. I don't even think there was time to bury him. When the town disintegrated into the ethers, so did he."

Emma blinked quickly to clear the tears warbling her vision. "Why," the word caught in raw clench of her throat. "Why, if I had the magic, why didn't I go back for him?"

Lillian hesitated before answering. "Because you couldn't remember you could. Not for a long time."

"What, I took some kind of forgetting potion?" Emma blinked now in surprise.

"Early tactic in the scourge war," Lillian replied evenly, "wipe away one's memory, wipe away one's pain, the scourge finds tastier prey. At the time, you were its number one target."

"Doesn't my magic protect me?"

Lillian kept her gaze to the floor, seeming to find comfort in the little nooks and gashes and cracks formed from countless steps from men now nothing more than a spidery scrawls in Killian's journals.

"It protects you from being a host, but it can still consume you. And who knew what it would gain from consuming the savior."

"So that's it? I take it to save myself? Screw everyone else?"

Tears dropped to the worn deck boards with Lillian's shaky reply. "You took it because you were pregnant. You took it to protect me." Her words rushed out, then, flowing unguarded from some tender place inside. "You forgot him and everything about him. You forgot the very reason you wanted to go back."

-0-

Emma sat silently, tears of her own sliding down her cheeks as Lillian brushed past with some excuse to attend to the ship. Her imagination retraced every word, magnified by fear and exhaustion, playing out in her mind tender and bitter moments overshadowed by grief and separation. So lost in thought was she that she barely registered the soft creak of leather as Killian appeared at the doorway.

"I just saw the lass, she looked upset," he knelt at her side, his warm hand on her leg. "Did you two…" he started, but weariness broke her last string of restraint and her lips pressed against his, silencing further words in the need for connection beyond language. He accepted, tender brushes deepening to take in the ache no voice could adequately express. These weren't the desperate kisses of harsh need, these were salty, soft lips embracing where all reason failed and only heartache remained. Emma's cheek warmed with Killian's thumb brushing away tears, and when they fell too fast, his lips swept up the overflow. She put her head to his shoulder, breathing in his musk and warmth and steadiness as seemingly every raw nerve and broken thing exposed by fading hope tumbled out in shuddering sobs.

In time, though, Emma pulled away, rational thought returning to her weary mind and with it some semblance of her usual stoicism. She wiped at her face with the palms of her hands. Killian pulled back her hair, something close to fear in his eyes. He opened his mouth to question her, but an all too familiar call, shrill and deadly, pierced through the deck above them.

-0-

Killian emerged from the lower deck first in time to see a winged form shoot through the ship's rigging. He watched it, trying to gauge its size until a sharp tug at his leg brought him to a knee and a second creature swooped past his head.

"Two of them?" he shouted.

A few steps away, Lillian threw her body weight onto one of the flame cannons, whirling it around to track one of the creatures. Killian lost no time dashing for the second cannon.

"Killian, you're the last person who should be out here," Emma warned, still half inside the hatch. "Neither of you should be, it's come after the both of you. It's taking advantage of Gold's absence, if we wait in here, we can last long enough for backup."

"Hiding out isn't your style, Swan."

"But strategy is yours, isn't it? We know they want you, we have that in our favor."

As if hearing a signal the two forms turned and swooped down toward the ship, toward Killian. Flame burst from Lillian's cannon and the two abruptly broke off, one banking straight into Killian's aim. He fired and the creature erupted in flames, shrill screeches piercing his ears. The hawkish creature shot up, and Killian realized the danger too late. It rammed straight into a mast, setting fire to the ship.

"Killian!"

He looked back down just in time to see the remaining scourge, the largest instance he'd seen yet, dive, talons outstretched, into Lillian's gut with enough force to knock her back against the wooden half wall. A green glow kept her feet pressed to the ground as red spread through her thick layers.

With a scream of his own, he fired again, but a hair too slowly. Lillian dropped to the ground and the scourge flitted to the air. Unsated, it turned and dove now at him. Killian fired, deadly aim tempered by countless sea battles, he intuitively lurched the heavy weapon into a direct kill shot. Only the cannon, instead of bursting forth in fire, spat out a meager lick of flame that dissipated into smoke.

"Bloody hell…"


	13. Ghosts

Apologies again for the length between updates. Had an extended family member pass away and just couldn't work the word mojo for a while.

* * *

"**All children, except one, grow up."  
**_**-Peter Pan**_

* * *

**Chapter 13: Ghosts**

Drifting back to consciousness, Lillian found the deck of the ship empty. Pulling herself to her knees, she glanced around wildly until hot pain in her gut sent her slumping back against the cannon. Her head thumped against iron, defeated. Beyond plank and sail lay not the Storybrooke harbor, but the near endless Neverland waters, broken only by the island itself on the distant horizon.

"As good a place as any to do this, the land where lost things go," a voice spoke from above. Again, a swirl of pale gold and bright green and Emma leaned into Lillian's vision—her Emma, the "savior queen"—hair lightened with age, skin creased with experience, but a glare as sharp as ever. Nobility and ferocity draped in chain mail and black leather. Every stitch of her battle dress a requiem and warning of something deadly, regal, and determined. "Only you're not lost, are you, 'Tiger Lily'? You just flat out don't belong _anywhere_."

Lillian's jaw clenched. "That's not my name."

Metal and leather shifted as the queen planted a foot on the cannon. "No, but it's who you are—who I made you. Sort of like your very own dark curse," she snapped a finger, a thought catching her. "Scratch that last part, maybe you would have fit in in Storybrooke. Two names for every person, two lives in every body. Hey, your mom might have even remembered one of them this time around!"

Ire churned in her core. Lillian noticed the hook lay in on the deck beside her, the chain clasp broken, blood pooling around it. Her blood. So much. Too much. The scourge needed but a nick, yet twice now, seemed intent to bleed her dry.

"We've been through this, _Lily_," the queen interrupted further thought. "Unlike the Emma Swan you know and loathe, I'm one voice you can't drink away. No, I am in here," she poked the girl's head in emphasis. "To. Stay." A tap-tap punctuated the point. "To get that blitzed, you must have been sorely disappointed when you didn't disappear."

_Beyond comprehension_, Lillian thought involuntarily. How she had waited in the cabin of _the Jolly Roger_, begging each moment to be her last, to finally fade away.

Smiling at the response, unspoken but no less understood, the queen straightened satisfactorily.

"Rumplestiltskin's warning wasn't a surprise, was it?" cooed another voice and the green and giggling man leaned over Lillian from the other side. "No, it was _fact_ to you."

Indeed Lillian had known, known for almost as long as she could remember, the consequences of changing the past. Her mother had known, too, the Rumplestiltskin of her time confirming what the Mr. Gold of this time had only guessed at. Saving the father meant sacrificing the daughter.

White-blonde hair brushed the girl's face as the queen leaned in further, exaggerating her words. "She chose you and you hated her for it."

Lillian glared at the so-called savior queen and all the familiar passions riled up from within. She saw the Emma Swan who made the choice, the _wrong_ choice. The Emma Swan who protected one tiny life, and in doing so, ultimately sacrificed all other life in the known realms. One life at immeasurable cost. Her life saved through inconceivable, inexcusable pain.

"Mmm, yes," Rumplestiltskin breathed in as if smelling fresh baked bread. "Sour condemnation and resentment aged with a few decades of hindsight. A classic recipe, but with a hint of something else. Something more," he leaned down further to better read Lillian, and she felt the press of expectation, "something particularly bitter."

With the two hated faces so close—their breaths mingling, her attention divided and anxieties multiplying—Lillian felt any rein, any control, over her base emotion slipping.

_If not for me, she could have gone back. Saved Hook. Saved the realms._

_If not for ME._

"Guilt! That we can work with," Rumplestiltskin slapped his hands together. "The savior wouldn't reset time for you—Rumplestiltskin may hate your guts for it, but I could hug you!" He flung his arms wide as if to embrace, but then eyed her wound skeptically. "Except, well, you seem to be wearing the contents of yours. It'd be unsanitary, you understand."

"No," the queen put a hand to her hip, caressing the hilt of a sword, "It's more than that… something changed."

Pressure from within railed at her inner restraints, soul secrets bubbling over until they burned against her pressed lips. Though, try as she might, the girl couldn't still her own mind.

Truthfully, something _had_ changed. One fact. One shift in her understanding and all the rage of those desolate years swept up in the air like ash. All those long years she had dreamed of her mother going back, defeating the first scourge and circumventing ultimate tragedy. Only now did she know the scourge didn't start in Storybrooke. Had Emma gone back at the first instinct, with only a half-understanding her enemy, it'd have been nothing short of suicide. Nor would she have waited some twenty years for a magic ship, the single greatest asset left on Lillian's side. Thus, Lillian at last admitted Emma had made the _right_ choice—for different motivations—but to the same effect: Rumplestiltskin's plan worked, perhaps better than anticipated. She had not only brought back knowledge—of the scourge, of the future, of the echoes of the savior queen's dreaded choice—but the ship. The ship retrofitted to the sole purpose of chasing and cutting down the scourge in any form, across the realms if it had to.

Her fingers brushed the hook, curling around its base.

"Seems there are a few brain cells the alcohol didn't wash away." The queen unsheathed the sword at her side, the gleaming tip coming to press against the girl's neck. With no small effort, Lillian grabbed the bloodied hook and chain, knocking the blade away, though the resounding shock in her torso pulled her to the planks in a screaming heap.

"Oh my, is she actually trying to fight her personal demons?" Rumplestiltskin snickered.

"Done fighting," the girl hissed into rough boards, "you two have no sway over me anymore."

More laughter. "That's not really how this works, dearie! You show a little spine, I just find a bigger demon!"

The two disappeared suddenly in swirling columns of smoke, leaving behind a third form in the dissipating haze, one she didn't recognize—a blondish-brown mop of hair, a green tunic wrapped around a teenage frame and smirk of chaotic malice.

"After all," his smirk widened as he stepped closer to the girl, "I'm literally a connoisseur of inner demons, what fun would it be if you only faced your own? Besides," he nudged her with his foot so that she rolled on her back to face him fully, "did you really think I was going to let 'Tiger Lily' come all the way to Neverland and not meet Peter Pan?"

"You're not a demon, you're a ghost."

"Cheeky little princess, you are. And just like your father when I met him," Pan crouched down. "A drunken, broken pirate. Oh, the _delicious_ irony."

"Not a pirate," Lillian's fingers clenched around the ends of the chain, whipping the hook around like a flail, deadly tip slashing through the air.

Apparently anticipating the strike, Pan caught the hook with one hand.

"And in denial! Four for four! Did you really think that was going to accomplish anything? You've already escaped once—twice, if you count that cute move with the time portal—do you really think you get another chance?"

"I don't need one. They've been warned. They're figuring you out. It's only a matter of time before they find you and end you."

"Have you met your parents?" Pan laughed, then feigned an embarrassed look. "Oh wait, sorry. I forgot. You didn't. Let me explain, something, then. Your grandparents were ready to give up the rest of their lives in Neverland for the sake of your brother. Your own mother gave up her best weapon, her own magic, to save your father. And you have that little book to tell you how far he'll go. What makes you think they're just going to let you die?"

"They know what to do with a host. They'll kill me before they'll let you hurt anyone through me."

"A host?" Pan's eyebrows shot up in exaggerated surprise. "Some mommy issues and a few dead family and you think you're ready spawn a scourge? Why, you've never even killed someone who didn't deserve it. You've been cut too much from the cloth of heroes. You're a plate of vegetables to a beast craving raw meat. Rumple was right there too, you're a nothing. Not when I have more inglorious options. No, I have another use for you, Lily. On your feet!" With a mighty tug on the chain still drawn between them, Pan hauled Lillian upright.

Lillian did her best to remain upright, but swayed unsteadily. "What, a light snack?"

Pan face dropped into look of false shock, as if she should have anticipated his plot.

"Why, bait, of course."

-0-

Fire flew from Emma's palms before she truly even thought of it. For the second time, time seemed to slow for her, the summoned fireball consuming the last of her strength. She dropped to her knees as Killian dove down, flame grazing his back. The creature, shrieking, shot up, adamantly flapping flaming wings. Killian rolled away, gracefully coming up to a knee, sparing a glance up at the malevolent bird before turning back to Emma.

Color drained from his face and he was on his feet dashing before Emma registered the danger.

Her vision flashed as something struck the back of Emma's head. She fell forward, ears ringing and hearing fading. A forceful kick to her shoulder knocked her on her back and she, bleary-eyed, found Lillian looming over her with chain and hook whirling in her hand. She made to strike again, but hook met hook as father tackled daughter and both tumbled to the deck.

A deep sense of urgency in Emma's muddled mind pressed her to do _something_ and she numbly felt for the gun strapped to her side. A dreaded screech announced greater danger. The scourge-hawk circled uneasily around the ship, charred wings affecting its flight.

Emma pulled her piece free of its holster. Hefting herself up on one elbow, she took hesitant aim with the other arm. The gun felt heavy in her hand, heavier still as she aimed at the struggling bodies. This wasn't right something, somewhere, screamed.

Lillian, with seemingly inhuman strength, struck Killian across the temple and rolled on top of him. Emma had her shot, free and clear.

But she just couldn't take it.

Another breath and Lillian rolled to the side again, hefting Killian up in her place. He was face up, chain wrapped around his neck and arms secured behind his back. The injured scourge didn't even need to dive, but rather, fluttered above his face. Emma fired, emptying the clip, but if any of the bullets hit, they had no effect except to annoy. The scourge lashed out, sinking a talon into the hollow of his cheek. With a squawk like laughter, it took off, leaving a reddening gash behind.

Instantly, Lillian went limp beneath him, the chain loosened. Killian, coughing, pulled the chain away with his hook. Emma dropped leaden arms to her side, her gun clattering to the deck. Her head throbbed and she could feel her heartbeat in her eyes. They drifted shut, ignoring any contrary command from her brain.

-0-

Killian slowly rose to his knees, hand on his temple. He swayed for a moment, eyes closed and dazed. When he again opened them, they fell on an empty deck. He called out for Emma, but heard only the waves lapping against the ship.

The waves of a dock he remembered all too well, off a certain village in the Enchanted Forest.

_No._

A hand touched his shoulder. Fearing Lillian was on the attack again, he grabbed it, twisting it as he whipped around to face her—only, instead of Lillian, he found a completely unexpected sight that struck him stone still. Dark hair, yes, but fairer skin and, rather than steely blue-grey, bright green.

_Milah._

She put her free hand to his cheek, her gaze never breaking his. Faintly, she whispered, "Your turn, my love."


End file.
